High School in the Community (2003-2010)

Weston High School (2002-2003)

Choral Ensembles (5)

String Orchestra

Music Theory

Course Design

MSED 435: Music, the mind, & Society

In this graduate seminar, students will explore, and critically reflect upon, the relationships among music, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and education. Course content includes aesthetic and praxial philosophies of music and the arts (from ancient Greece to the present) as well as the psychology of music, the history and sociology of music, and influential practices and schools of thought within the profession (i. e. Dalcroze, Gordon, Kodaly, Orff). Students will explore the implications of course concepts for contemporary music education at all grade levels, as applied in lesson, unit, and course planning.

Essentially, we will focus on several broad questions:

1. What is the purpose and value(s) of music education?

2. How do we see our role as music educators?

3. Who are our students? How do they learn best?

4. What musical content shall we teach our students? Why?

5. How shall we teach it? Why?

6. What is gained by problematizing common practices in our field?

7. How do we assess student learning?

Music in America

This course will study the history and development of popular musical styles in the Americas, focusing mainly on the United States. Through listening and reacting, lecture and discussion, writing and reading, blogging and thinking, students will grow in their understanding and appreciation of the wide variety of American music, its role in society, and the complex web of relationships among ethnicity, race, culture, nationality, creativity, the marketplace, and history. Prerequisite: Early America, previously or concurrently.